Circuit Board Redesign

Week 5

   The soldering of the capacitors and resistors proved troublesome. The ends of the capacitors were soldered together and to the resistors. So, we removed the capacitors, resistors, and amplifier from the circuit board and rethought our design. 

   

   A problem with the original design was that it lacked space. There was little room between the capacitors, resistors, and amplifier. This led to the accidental soldering. To allow more space, we implemented the use of wires to join the resistors and capacitors to the amplifier. The battery leads' wires were long enough to not need additional wire. A concept sketch of this design can be seen below:

Figure 1: Circuit Board Redesign Sketch

    Different colored wires will be used to tell the function of each wire. Blue wires are for electrodes and the RGA resistor. There will also be yellow and black wires. We have not decided what roles those colors will represent yet.

Figure 2: Circuit Board Redesign in Progress

  More circuit board troubles came later in the week. We realized that both ends of capacitors were soldered together. We also learned that the copper on the circuit board provides the connection between components, so we didn't have to solder parts directly together. Each component on the same horizontal row of copper (in the center) would be connected together. Each component on one of the 2 vertical columns of copper (on the sides) would be connected together. This leads to more room and less occurrences of accidental connections. A new circuit board will be bought, since there's too much solder on the current one. This new one will be a bigger model, to make room for any future mistakes. We may also use one of our extra amplifiers, since our current amplifier has been through a lot and may have burnt out.